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Help Give Animals
a Voice

When it comes to atomic discrimination, animals have no voice. Beyond Nuclear will be revising and updating the landmark report, Licensed to Kill, over the coming months.But we need your help to spread the word. Please consider making a tax-deductible gift to support this work and lend your voice to the plight of animals and radiation. If you earmark your gift with the name of one of the animals below, we will use it only for this work. Or you can go to our Donate page and make a gift to support all of our efforts.

Loggerhead:
($1,000 and higher)

Hawksbill:
($100-$500)

Hatchling:
(under $100)

Send your tax-deductible gift to:

Licensed to Kill Project
Beyond Nuclear
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400
Takoma Park, MD 20912

 

  

Protecting Animals

Beyond Nuclear Goals for Protecting Animals: Reduce and preferably eliminate harm to endangered sea turtles and other animals by reactor operation; publicize the increased destruction of animal life and habitat by the nuclear industry and the federal complicity in this practice.

Top News

A new report from a British researcher has found that fish are killed in their billions as a result of the operation of coastal nuclear reactors. These findings, by Dr. Peter Henderson at Oxford University, confirm those in our report of 2001 (see Licensed to Kill, below.) The British report described the effect on fish of nuclear reactor intake systems that can draw in a million gallons of water a minute plus the sea life living there. However, fish and other aquatic species - both fresh- and sea-water, are also negatively affected by the thermal discharges from reactors, particularly when the utility abruptly raises the temperatures of the discharge water, thermally shocking animals living in the vicinity. Such an incident occurred in August 2007 at the Braidwood Generating Station in Illinois where thousands of fish were killed, recorded in these dramatic photos.

Licensed to Kill

In 2001, Beyond Nuclear’s Paul and Linda Gunter, then with NIRS and Safe Energy Communication Council, co-authored a landmark report and accompanying video, describing how animals were harmed and killed by the routine operation of nuclear reactors. The authors found that marine habitats are being damaged and destroyed by nuclear power plant operations using the “once-through cooling system.” A variety of animal species are routinely drowned, thermally shocked, pulverized, injured and trapped by reactors that can draw in and discharge as much as three billion gallons of water a day to cool the plant.

Despite the report’s revelations, little has changed. If anything, the situation is worse, with the industry allowed to capture and kill even more animals including endangered sea turtles.

The report concluded that the regulatory oversight of the nuclear industry’s impact on threatened and endangered species is arbitrarily determined. Regulators routinely accommodate destructive operations by allowing higher take limits of “federally protected” species.

Beyond Nuclear will continue to uncover and expose this indifference to animal life and the habitats on which they depend by providing the public and media with new information and by updating and re-issuing the report.

View the 2001 report here.


 

 
 
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